His aim? Safer firearms
MIT dropout developing smart gun only its owner can use
Kai Kloepfer has a box he really wants to open. Inside, he hopes, is a device that will save countless lives.
But Kloepfer is keeping it inside the box as he walks through a Boston co-working space, not because it is a secret — because it is a gun. Rather, it is a nonworking early prototype of a gun outfitted with a fingerprint sensor that he hopes will be the first widely accepted smart gun to hit the market.
“I have people tell me it’s impossible to build a smart gun. As an engineer, as a scientist that’s ridiculous,” said Kloepfer, founder of Biofire. “Nobody’s ever built a proper smart gun, nobody’s ever actually done engineering and user research. That’s not something that can happen within the firearm industry.”
The handgun uses a fingerprint sensor on the grip, and will fire only if an authorized person is holding it, he said.
Kloepfer, 21, created the first prototype for a high school science fair six years ago and has been working on the gun on and off since then.
Growing up in Colorado, he remembers the Aurora movie theater shooting.
“We have this massive gun violence event, which has been talked about the entire country. What if there was something I could do to solve this problem?” he said.
Now, Kloepfer is focusing on turning his high school project into a sustainable business. He has raised an initial round of funding from investors in California and was selected for MassChallenge, a monthslong startup accelerator in Boston.
Biofire is building its handgun from scratch in order to completely integrate the sensor with the firearm. Biofire’s gun needs to be charged about once a year, Kloepfer said. Kloepfer, who dropped out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology two weeks ago, said Boston may seem like an unlikely home for a gun company, but the area has a unique combination of talent suited to a smart-gun company. Biofire’s five employees include those with experience with hardware engineering and the gun and defense industries.
“Boston is in my opinion the best city in the United States for hardware electronics,” he said.
For advocates trying to reduce gun deaths, smart guns that fire only when they’re supposed to, for the right people, hold as much promise as increased background checks.
“If there’s any one silver bullet in gun violence prevention, it’s background checks for all guns sales and personalized gun technology so only the intended user can fire a gun,” said John Rosenthal, founder of Stop Handgun Violence. “It will reduce suicides, it’ll reduce accidents among toddlers, it’ll reduce crime with stolen guns without any inconvenience to law-abiding gun owners.”
Monday Startup is a weekly feature. If you know of a startup with a compelling story, we’d love to hear about it. Email jordan. graham@bostonherald.com.